The best way to
deal with vipers is to tear out their teeth; and the best way to
deal with pseudo-critics is to deprive them of their poison-bag,
which is easily done by exposing their ignorance. The writer knew
perfectly well the description of people with whom he would have to
do, he therefore very quietly prepared a stratagem, by means of
which he could at any time exhibit them, powerless and helpless, in
his hand. Critics, when they review books, ought to have a
competent knowledge of the subjects which those books discuss.
Lavengro is a philological book, a poem if you choose to call it
so. Now, what a fine triumph it would have been for those who
wished to vilify the book and its author, provided they could have
detected the latter tripping in his philology--they might have
instantly said that he was an ignorant pretender to philology--they
laughed at the idea of his taking up a viper by its tail, a trick
which hundreds of country urchins do every September, but they were
silent about the really wonderful part of the book, the
philological matter--they thought philology was his stronghold, and
that it would be useless to attack him there; they of course would
give him no credit as a philologist, for anything like fair
treatment towards him was not to be expected at their hands, but
they were afraid to attack his philology--yet that was the point,
and the only point in which they might have attacked him
successfully; he was vulnerable there.
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